January 3, 2020

Manufacturing Is Officially In a Recession

With 2019 behind us, we now have a full year’s worth of measurements of the ISM’s Purchasing Managers’ Index for manufacturing. Here it is:

The typical measure of a recession is two consecutive quarters of contraction, and the quarterly averages for Q3 and Q4 are both negative. So manufacturing is in a recession.

The lesson here is simple: pray that Donald Trump ignores you. If he loudly tries to help, you are almost certainly doomed.

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